Friday, January 20, 2012

The Good Guys Win

The ESA has dropped it's support of SOPA. Holy shit.
Okay, kind of beside the point since the bill (and it's cousin PIPA) are both effectively dead, but still a pretty big deal and a HUGE moment for the video-gaming community. If nothing else, it shows that the same fervor that's often mounted in support of silly causes like Diablo III's color-scheme or "nerfing" of this or that feature CAN in fact be mobilized to effect real concrete change in the industry; and that in itself is an incredibly positive development.

In terms of business/politics/history, this whole series of events also represents a pretty massive shift in the entertainment-industry power structure - essentially, the tech/digital side of the amusement biz (video games, Google, Wiki, YouTube etc) were on the winning side of a legislative defeat while the film/TV side came out the (corporate) losers. The Internet is now "officially" more powerful than Hollywood - that's a big change, and the aftershocks will be felt for a long time.

For those who're wondering about the status of the Stand Together boycott... as of right now, I don't know. Speaking only for myself, I think that it's incumbent upon to me to acknowledge that they "listened to us" and rescind the "no E3 coverage whatsoever" blackout for my own blogs; but I don't think I'll be throwing them a party either - they never should've supported the bill in the first place. I'll clarify that further once everyone invovled in the initial boycott gets on the same page.

As to "what's next?" Tomorrow night (Saturday) at 10pm CST, I'll have a NEW episode of The Game OverThinker up for ALL audiences that - rather presciently, if I do say so myslef - has a few things to say about where anti-piracy legislation and the relationship between the entertainment industry and it's audiences in an increasingly-digitized age needs to go. I hope you'll tune in - it also features the announcement of some "tweaking" to the format of the series that I think many will find very pleasing.

9 comments:

It will be interesting to see how the shift in balance between Hollywood and the internet eventually pans out, but for me that wasn't the most interesting thing that happened.

As far as I'm concerned, despite all the talk and complaining about giant corporations controlling Washington, this ultimately shows how the common person really does have the power to stand up for themselves and effect change if they actually try to, instead of sitting on their ass bitching about how no one can.

Corporations still run Washington. This was just the Goliath vs. Goliath battle of the entertainment industry versus the IT/social media industry. Multi-billion dollar corporations pitted against each other. Ultimately, in spite of everything, it might just be that Google could wreck some serious shit on the United States simply by dropping all their government contracts that got congress to back down.

It is not that "the good guys won". It is a lesser evil beating a greater evil. The greater evil will return, we must never stop fighting it. In life you rarely get to be wholly good, you can however see that the least of potential evils wins out.

This wasn't the tech industry beating Hollywood, this was the tech industry and the general public beating Hollywood. The interests of the people happened to be aligned with the interests of some large corporations. Even though the West was going to hate Stalin later, they still teamed up with him to kill Hitler. (Blah blah, Godwin's Law, whatever, it's still a valid analogy)

That's the real story with "the Internet winning." On the Internet, corporations aren't the only ones who have a voice. They sure have a big one — for now — but the balance of power is shifting.

I do like the new format of the overthinker. now i can enjoy the opinion part and the actual show in separate part instead of all mixed together which is nice cause it makes the pacing feel better for bot parts.

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About Me

Bob is a part-time independent filmmaker, part-time amateur film critic and full time Movie Geek. He is heterosexual, a pisces, and a severely lapsed Catholic. He is a tireless enemy of censorship, considers his personal politics "Libertine" and enjoys acting as a full time irritant to overly serious people of ALL political stripes.